Jack London

“ Where the Tamesi River flowed in we passed the drawbridge wrecked by the Federals, and the sunken gunboat, the Vera Cruz, abandoned with open sea cocks when the Constitutionalists took the town. We continued up the Pánuco, passed the tiled roofs of Americans who farmed the land, past the grass huts of the natives, and past many brown-skinned September Morns bathing in the shallows. The American farms were deserted, the owners not yet having come back from their forced trip to the United States. ”

“ From the headreaches of the Pánuco they are sometimes months in making the round trip, and they are often trusted with thousands of pesos with which to make purchases in Tampico. From every foreigner in Mexico, comes the same testimony of the rock-ribbed integrity of the Indian. It is always the mixed breed who is unveracious, dishonest, and treacherous. It was the mixed breed who composed the mobs in Tampico that cried death to the gringos. ”

“ When I worked I got sixty centavos a day. Now I get four pesos a day. I have a nice house. There are chairs in my house. I have a talking machine. Before I lived like a dog. No, I won't be a soldier and fight. All I want is to be left alone." Forty-seven miles above Tampico we came to the superintendent's wells in the Pánuco field. Two days before, his handful of American employees had returned to the looted camp and began moving oil and building new emergency reservoirs against the time when they might again be driven out. ”

“ But, while the Tampico oil region is unthinkably big and rich, so much time and money have been required in development that, out of eighty-nine oil producing companies operating during the last fourteen years, only three have so far paid dividends. One particular company has invested $38,000,000 and has paid but a dividend and a half. There are other companies that have invested more than this one. A single company, which has so far paid one dividend, has 4,000 men on the pay roll, a monthly wage list of $100,000 and a monthly grocery bill of $10,000. ”

“ No hay is cured in this land, nor do the natives feed grain even to their work animals. The horses and mules are grass-fed and leaf-browsed, and grass and leaves are green the year around. Rain falls every month in the year, the "rainy season" merely connoting the period of excessive rain. The Pánuco River was alive with traffic. The first returning adventurers were already moving oil. River steamers and ocean tugs moved up and down with long tows of tank barges, and here and there, against the banks, barges were loading oil from the pipe lines of near-by wells. ”

“ Before I knew what was happening, I found myself in the company of 500 of the Constitutionalists, dispatched to aid in the pursuit of General Zaragoza and his 4,000 Federals. The Harum-Scarum Warriors
NEVER on the warpath have I encountered a bunch of warriors so harum-scarum, so happy-go-lucky, so brimming over with good food and high spirits. Everyone was mounted. Every horse was stolen. On the horses were the brands of every ranch and hacienda from the Rio Grande to the Pánuco. Occasionally there was a grizzled oldster. ”

“ In the old town of Pánuco he rested while getting horses and provisions for his men. He was a beaten man, and, but for one thing, he would have been destroyed. He sent a message to General Pablo Gonzales, commanding the rebels that had driven him out of Tampico. "I am a beaten man," was the tenor of Zaragoza's message. "My men are exhausted. I am short of ammunition. If you attack me, I am lost. But the moment you attack I shall fire the oil wells." And the rebels did not attack. It was a pretty situation. The rebels planned to add to their treasury by shaking down the oilmen. ”

“ From the time when the oilmen were driven out and shanghaied to the United States this great volume of oil accumulated in the tanks and in the open emergency reservoirs. A wad of cotton waste, saturated with kerosene and ignited and tossed into the oil, could have started the $2,000,000,000 bonfire. General Zaragoza could so have started it. So could any drunken peon. Marvels of the Oil Field
PERHAPS no oil region has been tapped that will compare with the Tampico region. The wells on all the five fields are gushers, and, unlike most gushers, are slow in gushing themselves out. ”

“ Another chief, whose activities are patently diplomatic, is instructed to attempt to persuade the rebel leaders to use the repair shops at Tampico. It is decided, since the Ebano oil must be moved because of lack of further storage, to get the rebels to move it over the captured Mexican Central. "If they won't or can't," the superintendent concludes, "then propose that they let us move it over their lines. We can furnish our own trains, crews, and everything." ”

“ Under Stress of War
IN that hot room of the house on the hill the telephone was never idle. Now the superintendent, now one chief, and now another answered it. A call would come from some distant station. Two horses had been run off by Constitutionalists. Another call: the Federals had just killed five cows and a bull for food, and the superintendent, in return, desired to know if his pony was still safe. An employee arrives on the porch with the news that four of the auto-trucks lifted by the rebels have been recovered in Tampico and are being brought across the river on a barge. ”

“ It is blackmail, but the superintendent smilingly lends it, and as soon as the Colonel is gone sends orders to hire another launch for the company at Tampico. Following that, at his suggestion, a chief telephones a lone man in a lone station in the path of the Federal drift to be ready to disconnect the wires and cut and run for it. Between telephone calls a broken conference is held on the problem of moving the Ebano oil. A chief states that the company's shop at Ebano is occupied by seven engines which the rebels have captured from the Mexican Central and are repairing. ”

“ Another station telephones a rumor that the 500 rebels have run into the 3,400 Federals and are having a hot time of it. One of the chiefs telephones a subordinate to hire a launch to take the place of the commandeered Doodle-bug. Scarcely is this done when a slender half-breed presents himself with a fresh commission to be a colonel and to raise a regiment of 500 men for the rebels. The superintendent shows the new Colonel every consideration. ”

“ We are not savages." Yes, he was a four years' veteran. It had been a long fight, with many a day and week of hunger when the very though of a tortilla made one sick with longing. And straight beef after a month, cooked hot from the hoof, did sometimes make one tired. ”